From the course: Layout and Composition: Advanced Principles
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Disharmony
- In my Foundation of Layout course, I define harmony as the combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce chords and chord progressions having a pleasing effect. In design, a designer creates the sense of harmony when many disparate elements work together and produce a pleasing solution. So why would I want to create disharmony? Isn't that jarring and uncomfortable for the viewer? Yes. Disharmony is uncomfortable but that can be necessary to get the viewer's attention as a response to a subject that isn't harmonious or as a way to challenge the status quo and command change. If we create harmony with a similarity between shapes and proportions, we can generate disharmony by using unrelated forms and no sense of proportional consistency. The audience expects a comfortable experience a printed or screen based design will be functional, easy to use and not make too many demands on us. But we lead to viewer's attention by throwing a wrench into that soft experience. The…
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